Tirdad Zolghadr was born in 1973, spent his early childhood in Tehran and then grew up an airline brat in various European and African cities. He works mainly as a freelance critic/curator and writes regularly for Frieze magazine.

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Tirdad Zolghadr

The Promessa, a 1970s cocktail bar, is to be reopened in Tehran. Not as the glamorous location it once was, but as a slick showroom for art, fashion, and corporate receptions-a heady mix of profit, culture, and metropolitan swagger.

By and by a hidden agenda emerges, involving an international network with gruesome intentions. Join the narrator, a young man with artistic ambitions who has no wish to disappoint his cosmopolitan backers, as he frantically struggles to open the Promessa on time. Shamelessly opportunistic, he turns local painters into stage props, militia members into video artists, and a spate in prison into a career opportunity.

A frenetic, compelling look at modern Tehran, conspiracy theories, political fashions and the omnivorous international art world.

In the years following the revolution, Tarofi was a notorious political figure, a mullah, traveling judge and henchman in one. Along with other supporters of the budding Islamic Republic, Tarofi took it upon himself to rid the fledgling state of its enemies in an uncomplicated, down-to-earth manner.

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